Many Clarifying SiYuan Questions Before Migration

First of all, I'm very excited that this project exists. 🙏 🎉

It is essentially the dream knowledge base tool I have always wanted. I'm considering migrating an existing knowledge base I have to a self-hosted SiYuan instance, with sync to S3 or WebDAV. Before I do this (lot of work) I have many questions, and I hope someone can answer one or more of them. I tried to find all questions I had before in the FAQ and documentation, sorry if I missed anything there.

  1. I would like to transfer a knowledge base with about 6,000 pages, with each page roughly equivalent to one printed sheet of paper (some contain only a few sentences, while others have 4-5 pages, max 10 or so).

    There are many internal links, and most of it is organized in a database-like structure. Biggest one is like 300 entries, the load time for the view is ~ 10 seconds with the tool I'm currently using on a 2024 Apple Silicone Mac.

    There are also a lot of screenshots. How likely am I to run into performance issues on modern systems?

  2. Is my assumption correct that most processing occurs server-side when running SiYuan via Docker? I'm currently using a knowledge base tool that does all the processing in the browser (except sync), which has performance bottlenecks and also drains a lot of power from the battery.

  3. Is my assumption correct that if I run SiYuan on Docker and have S3 or WebDav sync enabled, I can sync with my iOS client? I somewhere read that the docker version can't be synced with iOS, I can't find the source of that information again, but this was probably only meant for "direct sync", S3 should work, right?

  4. For users who prefer to self-host SiYuan, are there plans to develop local alternatives to features that have notable placements in the web UI like the Cloud Inbox? Specifically, if I purchase the Lifetime Pro plan and only use SiYuan on my own computer/server, will I have access to all features that don't require SiYuan's cloud infrastructure?

    I believe the Cloud Inbox is the only feature that could also be offered as self-hostable in the Pro version (via local API, imap client or something like that), which threw me off a little bit.

    My thought: "Will there be more features in the future I can't use? Or is the idea to have everything that can be run locally in the Pro plan and only hosted servies in the VIP/monthly plan?

  5. I noticed that there is some effort to make the SiYuan community and documentation more international. When I checked the plugins and GitHub issues, most of them were in Chinese. Is there a plan to transition this to English for a global audience and better collaboration, or is the focus mainly on Chinese-speaking countries for the forseeable future?

  6. Is the self hosted web version treated as a "first-class citizen", meaning that development isn't primarily focused on the desktop/mobile platforms? I had a bad experience with a project that abandoned the web version, despite it being my primary means of accessing the knowledge base from different systems without having to install a client.

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    • OmniSource 1
      VIP Warrior

      Looping in @88250 and @Vanessa for these questions about SiYuan

    • 88250 1

      Hello, I will try my best to answer your concerns.

      1. SiYuan of this data scale will not encounter too big performance problems. For performance optimization, please refer to User Guide - Performance Optimization
      2. In addition to the server, browser rendering also requires calculations. Please refer to the above item
      3. Data synchronization can work on Docker/iOS, and all devices keep the same copy of the data
      4. Account verification requires SiYuan's cloud service; Cloud Inbox can try to build locally (such as through plugins). In the future, we will not move existing free features to paid plans
      5. Internationalization requires the help of the community. For GitHub Issues, if it is raised in English, we will reply in English, and if it is in Chinese, we will reply in Chinese, so that communication is more efficient
      6. At present, development resources are mainly concentrated on the desktop-end. This is a compromise made due to limited development resources. Our own wish is to maintain the best user experience on all device-ends

      Thank you for your interest in SiYuan. If you have any questions, please feel free to post.

    • oshelton 1
      PRO
      1. Is my assumption correct that if I run SiYuan on Docker and have S3 or WebDav sync enabled, I can sync with my iOS client? I somewhere read that the docker version can't be synced with iOS, I can't find the source of that information again, but this was probably only meant for "direct sync", S3 should work, right?

      You can sync between iOS, Desktop, Android, and Web (docker) instances if you have purchased at least the Pro lifetime license via S3 and WebDav.

      I'm syncing with a self hosted instance using Minio for my S3 compatible provider and so far it's working very well for syncing between my laptop, desktop, and mobile devices. My workspace is not nearly as big as what you are considering though.

      I noticed the initial sync after setting things up for the first time took several minutes even though there was very little to sync, so you may want to set up sync before you add tons of content to the workspace.